Stolen Generations

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“	The Australian practice of Indigenous child removal involved both systematic racial discrimination and genocide as defined by international law. Yet it continued to be practiced as official policy long after being clearly prohibited by treaties to which Australia had voluntarily subscribed.	„
	~ The Bringing them Home report.

The Stolen Generations was a phenomenon in which Indigenous Australian children were removed from their families to be integrated into white society. The goal of the removal policy was to biologically absorb aboriginal children into the white population by removing individuals with mixed ancestry in an attempt to "breed the color" out of them.

History

The earliest legislation for child removal from aboriginal families began in Victoria, under the Aboriginal Protection Act of 1869. Similar policies would be enacted in other states to regulate the affairs of aboriginal people and declare Chief Protectors as legal guardians of indigenous children, thus giving them the right to confiscate children without the consent of parents and making the children legal wards of the state. In addition, said policies were also enacted to authorize removal of children without a requirement of proof of neglect in court. The role of the Chief Protector was authorized in every state and territory with the exception of Tasmania, which only had half-blooded individuals residing on Cape Barren Island, although indigenous children were removed there as well. Authorities would also remove children soon after birth and would sometimes even lie to the parents that their children died in certain circumstances.

Those who were removed from their families were of mixed descent and were declared legally white, as it was widely believed that the aboriginal race was dying out and that full-blooded individuals were incapable of integrating into white society. This idea of biological absorption was expressed by various Chief Protectors, such as A.O. Neville, Cecil Cook and William Garnet South. Despite the Chief Protectors' claims that their goal was to protect the children from abuse or neglect, many of the victims suffered abuse and neglect from their new families themselves, often being tortured and raped by their new masters. Although Indigenous Australians were finally given equal voting rights in 1967, the Stolen Generations would persist until the early 1970's.

In the 1990's, an investigation into the Stolen Generations was commissioned and the Bringing them Home report was published in 1997. The report detailed the various injustices suffered by the Stolen Generations and offered an official apology by the Australian government. While every state and territory government apologized for the removal policy, prime minister John Howard denied that the Stolen Generations were performed with genocidal intent and turned down the apology request, stating that an apology would imply "intergenerational guilt". Despite that, Howard's successor, Kevin Rudd apologized to the Stolen Generations on February 13th, 2008.